Kalman Segal. By (beyond) an imaginary river

Abstract

In 1946 Segal left Sanok, the city of his childhood, forever. However, he never broke emotional and spiritual ties with the “small town” on the San, as he calls it. That is why, most of his works are devoted to the “landscape of trust” in Podkarpacie. In his poems and prose, he often used the motifs deriving from the Jewish tradition. One of them is a mystical river Sambation. He shapes his own polemical standpoint on the meanings constructed around it. First of all, he rejects the eschatological and historiosophical symbolism of the legendary river. In his prose, it is an artificial border that differentiates people according to their nationality, wealth, social status, customs, religious and political beliefs.